Get your Christmas on!

Here is our new mix which should kick off your Chistmas party nicely! Once again we’ve got some of our Funk, Soul and Rhthym & Blues favorites plus some extra Xmas nuggets that we hat to put into this years the mix.

It was great fun searching and saving up throughout the year so that we had enough original selections including the super cool 50s doo wop Deboniars ‘Crazy Santa Claus’ which portrays old st nick as both a cool and crazy cat, plus it has that great line ” to all the chicks at the mall shop down the street, got stacks of records with the boogie beat” – With lines delivered in style like that, its a great opener. Freddy King‘s R&B jumper ‘I hear jingle bells’, from his brilliant christmas double sider 7″ and the christmas classic, ‘White Christmas’ covered by Baby washington thats taking it to new funky levels.

We know they’re on about every Soul, Funk christmas mix going these days but we still wanted to include some more festive 45s made famous by the Tramp Records complitations from a few years back as we’ve not touched them in the previous mixes, like the laid back ‘Stone soul Christmas by Binky Griptite and the groovy ‘Funky Christmas to you’ by J Hines. We also had to included Clarence Carter’s ‘Back Door Santa’ this year as a little nod to the brand new re issue of Run DMC’s Christmas in Hollis 45 that came out this month.

‘Winter Man‘ taken from the bside to the ‘Funky Party’ 45 by Clarence Ried is a beatiful little record about the turning of the season, and if you have no love in your life then the winter is going to be tough ride. While not strictly a xmas record, its fitting none the less with tight drumming, ghostly wind blowing sounds and an infectious groove that has a certain ‘Stealy Dan – Peg’ vibe to it. It’s bound to brighten up a mean old winters day and we hope it puts a smile on your face.

Playing in every department store up and down the country while you did your xmas shopping was Mabel Scott‘s lively ‘Boogie Woogie Santa Claus’ so it seemed right to add this popular xmas stomper it to our mix this year, and to accompany it we dug up ‘Christmas Date Boogie’ by Big Joe Turner and ‘Trim Your Tree’ by Jimmy Butler whos clearly a little frisky at Christmas time. Ray Charles with ‘Snow is falling’, nearly did not make the mix but was left in on the final cut as its reminding us that not everybody at christmas is having it easy. While its lovely to have food, gifts, decorations and parties to attend with friends or family, its important to spare a moment for those that are down and out of luck at christmas time. We finish up with our star on the cover, the wonderful Duke Pearson with the ultimate christmas classic ‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas‘

The download pack is all ready to go for your ipods, 320kbps, all nicely covered and id track tagged, or you can stream it on our SOUL 45 mixcloud page

We hope you have a fantastic Christmas and New year. Thanks again for all the support for what we do in our city on the south coast – See you in 2015!